You make utter bollocks blogging

Fred Wilson recently posted in his blog that he was making the grand sum of $500 a year from the blog. In round terms he is "raking in" $2 a day from around 2000 site page views daily, and getting 1.5 cents a click. That's a CPM of $1 and a click through rate of around 1%.

Its really the under 2 cents a click that is the killer here. One reader comments on Fred's blog

If your weblog was more focused on a specific niche (ie, venture capital) rather than just a random slice of your life, Google would show better ads and you'd earn substantially more money.

I blog on a tangential subject and make $500 a week off your traffic.

Which would be, say, 10000 clicks (7% CTR) at 50 cents a click (or whatever similar permutation. Undoubtedly, if you want the money, then that's the field you have to go after. And attract targeted AdSense ads that will actually deliver that sort of CTR and EPC

And at the other end of the scale The Blog Herald reports

News from the Google Analyst Day that Jason Calacanis’ Weblogsinc is bringing in over $600 USD per day in AdSense revenue and made $45,000 USD in its first 4 months with the program, which would put its yearly take from Adsense revenue alone to in excess of $180,000 per year based on this early figure, but with continued growth amongst the Weblogsinc sites and regular new additions to the network, we are guessing that the figure will be closer to $250,000 USD over 12 months

And would you believe it Weblogsinc is in niche blogging

Weblogs, Inc. is dedicated to creating trade Weblogs (a.k.a. “blogs”) across niche industries in which user participation is an essential component of the resulting product.

Blogging for Dollars has a heap of tips on how to make more from a blog. And it all seems to come back to niche blogging. That guy produced a blog on Personal Video Recorders, and

Late that night I remembered the ads and logged into my Adsense account to see how the day went. I clicked over to reports to see the activity. From approximately 3,000 visits (not too shabby at all), enough people clicked through that I made $40 in the first 24 hours.

Must have been pushing 200 clicks at 20 cents a click (or whatever combination). TBray with his general blog

Bray says he makes about $200 to $500 a month from Google ads, after subtracting his Web hosting charges, which he won't disclose.

Russell Beattie Claims to do well from AdSense

Yep, Kanoodle didn't work out. Over two days I made $12 (where I would normally make almost $45 given my AdSense average for Wednesdays and Thursdays).

But for the life of me I couldn't find a single AdSense ad on his site. Bit of digging and I find that he only serves you up AdSense ads if you have come via Google search (or is now changing it to from any referrer) - regulars do not get the ads

What I have decided to do is to look at he income generated by a number of high profile blogs, and see what I can learn from them. Then relook at this summary page, and rewrite it in the light of what I have learnt.